|
THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
|
25. 'With Very Great Hope'
THAT THE 'NEW BALANCE OF POWER WITHIN THE VATICAN' DID come to pass -- as Calvi had predicted it would -- was confirmed by events in Rome during the next three years. A resuscitated Ambrosiano was placed under new ownership, as Andreotti had wanted. The United Trading family descended into a corporate hell, never to be heard from again. The IOR was bailed out of trouble, with persons close to Opus Dei assuming control over it and the papal purse strings. But as these events unfolded it became more than ever apparent that Calvi, even in death, held the key to a bundle of secrets that remained a threat to the new power group at the Vatican. Possession of those secrets and their selective destruction had to be assured at any cost. The secrets were of course contained in Calvi's bulging black briefcase and missing cardboard boxes, and provided the only evidence linking the dead banker to those associated with the Vatican's new power group. For information about what happened to the briefcase we have to rely on an Italian secret service report. [1] It disclosed that on the same day that Calvi's body was discovered a courier had flown on a private jet from Geneva to Gatwick where Carboni handed him a part of the briefcase's contents. These were flown back to Geneva and taken to a secluded lakeside villa where Gelli and Ortolani were waiting to examine them. The briefcase itself -- with the remainder of the documents and the several bunches of keys -- was flown by another private jet on Sunday from Edinburgh to Klagenfurt where the next day it was deposited in a strongbox at the Karmoner Savings Bank. [2] On the Monday some of the conspirators gathered in Zurich to compare their alibis, and to consult by telephone with a lawyer in Rome, Wilfredo Vitalone, brother of Andreotti's closest confidant, Senator Claudio Vitalone. They decided that Vittor would give himself up to the authorities in Trieste, while Carboni went into hiding. Financially, at least, Carboni could afford to take some time off. Between January and May 1982 Calvi had authorized a series of payments to Swiss accounts under the Sardinian businessman's control totalling £16.3 million. This was not bad income for a man who the previous October had bounced cheques in the amount of £352,000. [3] On 2 July 1982 the three commissioners appointed by the Bank of Italy to take control of Banco Ambrosiano met Marcinkus at the IOR offices in Rome. Marcinkus maintained that the IOR was not bound by the two comfort letters it had issued under the date of 1 September 1981 and therefore the Vatican bank would not pay the $1,300 million (£730 million) the commissioners insisted it owed the Ambrosiano. On 13 July 1982, Cardinal Casaroli tried to calm international criticism of the Vatican's lack of financial scruples by appointing a committee of 'three wise men' to unravel the true nature of the IOR dealings with Banco Ambrosiano: Philippe de Week, former chairman of Union Bank of Switzerland who was involved in the 'sniffing aircraft' scandal, Joseph Brennan, chairman of Emigrant Savings Bank of New York, and Carlo Cerutti, a senior executive of STET, the Italian state-owned telecommunications company. Meanwhile Carboni was arrested near Lugano. His briefcase contained a stack of documents relating to various aspects of Calvi's disappearance and the co-ordinated alibis of the key co-conspirators for the period around the time of the banker's death. The same day in Milan subpoenas were issued for Marcinkus, Mennini and de Strobel. Fearing arrest, Marcinkus moved into the Governor's Palace inside the Vatican City. On 5 August 1982, John Paul II approved raising Opus Dei to a Personal Pre1ature, though the decision was not announced for another two and a half weeks due to strong dissent within the Curia. The dissent showed that four years into John Paul II's papacy resistance to the clique that had worked for his election remained significant and a period of further consolidation was needed. On 6 August 1982, the Bank of Italy placed Banco Ambrosiano in liquidation. Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano, formed by seven leading Italian commercial banks, immediately took over the operations of old Banco Ambrosiano, paying £252 million for Ambrosiano's remaining £1,460 million in deposits and its domestic network of one hundred branches. The foreign network, which contained most of the liabilities, was severed from the parent and therefore was not included in the buy-out operation. Its various components went into liquidation under separate procedures in the jurisdictions concerned. The new Ambrosiano opened its doors for business on the following Monday as if nothing had happened. On 23 August 1982, the Vatican spokesman, Father Romeo Panciroli, announced that Opus Dei would be transformed into a Personal Prelature. Panciroli added, however, that publication of the relevant document -- entitled With Very Great Hope -- had been postponed for 'technical reasons'. Vatican sources claimed that foremost among the 'technical reasons' was Cardinal Giovanni Benelli's continued and determined opposition. With Carboni in custody, dissension broke out among the conspirators just as the Calvi family was moving to have the suicide verdict handed down by the first London inquest quashed. The verdict had been based on the coroner's contention that the body bore no signs of violence, when in fact there were marks to the face consistent with thumb scratches made as the noose was slipped rapidly over the banker's head from behind. One of the hitherto unnamed conspirators was pressing for a larger payoff. But before appropriate measures were taken, Gelli decided it was time to come in from the cold. On 13 September 1982, he attempted to withdraw, £30 million from his account with the Union Bank of Switzerland in Geneva: hardly an inconspicuous operation. The bank manager politely asked his client to wait while the withdrawal was processed and called the police. Gelli was arrested on an Italian warrant. Sergio Vaccari andLicio Gelli were said to know each other. Gelli was an ardent collector, and Vaccari had excellent contacts in the London antiques trade. Originally from Milan, he spoke four languages and was described by his former landlord as an elitist with an enormous hatred of humanity. 'He would murder for a price and that was known in the underworld. You see, he found an ecstasy in violence. He loved other people's fear,' claimed Bill Hopkins. He was so frightened of Vaccari that in the spring of 1982 he asked the 'antiques' dealer to move out. Vaccari agreed, provided Hopkins found him something of equal standing in the same neighbourhood. Hopkins did, at 68 Holland Park. When he moved out, Vaccari left behind a file of Calvi press clippings. Thinking nothing of it, Hopkins tossed it out. Then a few weeks later Vaccari returned to ask Hopkins for details about renting a convenience flat at the Chelsea Cloisters, where Hopkins knew the management. According to 'Podgora', Vaccari was the point-man. He conveyed Calvi from the Chelsea Cloisters to the final rendezvous with his killers. But Vaccari thought his work deserved a better price. In early September 1982 he flew to Rome for a few days. When he returned, according to Hopkins, he was in 'a sunny mood'. He told his cleaning lady to take a few days off. When she returned to clean the apartment on the morning of 15 September 1982 -- two days after Gelli's arrest in Geneva -- she found her employer half sprawled across a white leather sofa in a pool of blood. He had been stabbed eighteen times about the face and chest. The Metropolitan police, when they arrived, assumed that Vaccari had known his killers. The curtains were drawn. Three half-filled whisky glasses and a box of 'After Eight' chocolates were on the coffee table. An open briefcase which contained an Italian Masonic document was on one of the two matching armchairs. There were traces of drugs and electronic weighing scales in the kitchen. His antique desk had been rifled and two drawers spilled open. One of Vaccari's neighbours reported seeing two men leave building at about the presumed time of the murder and believed they were speaking Italian. Among the suspects questioned by the police was Giuseppe 'Pippo' Bellinghieri. The thirty-six-year-old Bellinghieri admitted knowing Vaccari and having visited the Holland Park apartment several times. But Bellinghieri claimed to have been on a pilgrimage to Poland when Vaccari was murdered. The investigation was closed and the crime remains unsolved. With Gelli and Carboni in prison, Vaccari out of the way, and a suicide verdict on Calvi that the City of London Police seemed determined to uphold, the conspirators were secure. One of the conspiracy's essential features had been to paint Roberto Calvi's reputation as black as possible. It was said that he had embezzled money, accepted undisclosed commissions, consorted with crooks and kept a high-class mistress in Rome -- in other words that he was a man of no morals. Suddenly Opus Dei and the Vatican entered the fray, also implying that Calvi was a liar and a cheat. How could anyone believe such a man? His reputation was thoroughly sullied, in spite of the family's efforts to vindicate him. By association, his family also became tainted. It was suggested, for example, that their only interest in having the suicide verdict overturned was to collect the £1.75 million in insurance money due on the banker's death. While the campaign to slander Calvi continued, the Vatican's 'three wise men' delivered a preliminary report. By their own admission it 'did not have a conclusive character' because they had not been given full access to the relevant documents. Consequently, they recommended a joint investigation by the Vatican and Italian governments, to be conducted 'on the basis of the documents in the possession of the two parties, in order subsequently to draw from them consequences that seem legitimate.' [4] This started a new flood of rumours that so alarmed the Vatican it felt compelled to publish an editorial in the 8 October 1982 issue of l'Osservatore Romano, denying that Opus Dei or any of its members had dealings of any sort with Calvi or Banco Ambrosiano. Then on 17 October 1982 l'Osservatore Romano published a denial that the IOR had received any funds from the Ambrosiano. This was repeated In its weekly English language edition of 28 October 1982.
These assertions were misleading. To maintain that 'the IOR did not receive any funds from the Ambrosiano group ... and therefore is not bound to restore anything' was untrue. At that very moment the IOR was in the process of repaying £60 million in lira deposits to the Ambrosiano group. But the statement insisted that the conclusions were based on 'a long and accurate study carried out by the IOR and its legal advisers on the basis of documentation in the possession of the Institute'. Very well, but what study? Why was it never made public or, for that matter, made known to the three wise men? The study was anything but accurate. It would have been interesting, therefore, to have seen the documentation that the experts relied upon in making their conclusion. Were they forged documents? Based on the fact that in another nineteen months the Vatican would own up to a 'moral responsibility in the affair', the question of forgery became relevant. The other relevant question remained who, really, was running the IOR? One can only wonder, therefore, which legal advisers conducted the investigation and whether they were members of Opus Dei. Moreover, the language seemed to have an all too familiar ring to it. Certainly Cardinal Benelli, who had at least some of the facts at hand, should have known the statement to be false. But for the moment the energies of the Roman Curia were focused on preparing for the triennial plenary session of the College of Cardinals that was scheduled to open towards the end of November. On Friday, 22 October 1982, Opus Dei's most implacable opponent in the College of Cardinals, Archbishop Benelli of Florence, suffered a massive heart attack -- infarto miocardico acuto, the medical bulletin said. But the sixty-two-year-old Benelli -- a hearty, good-living Tuscan -- had been in robust health, claimed his personal secretary. He worked long hours and rarely slept more than four hours a night. The first signs of heart trouble began only two days before and he died on 26 October 1982. His passing was said to have been a miracle as important for Opus Dei as the unexplained cure of Sister Concepcion which had paved the way for the Founder's beatification. Benelli had been preparing to oppose Opus Dei's becoming a Personal Prelature at the meeting of cardinals. Four days before the convocation opened, Opus' Dei's regional vicar for Italy, Don Mario Lantini, wrote a one-page letter to Clara Calvi and her son Carlo to complain about their declarations to the press. The tone of the letter was obsequious. Other than its posturing, one wonders why a doctor of theology and philosophy such as Lantini would have bothered. The obvious answer must be that by insisting the banker had been murdered, the Calvis were embarrassing more than a few people. After offering his 'Christian condolences', Lantini referred to three recent articles in the Wall Street Journal, La Stampa and l'Espresso in which the Calvis affirmed that Roberto Calvi had been in contact with Opus Dei before his death. Lantini continued:
Lantini gloated over the fact that he was never graced with a reply and Opus Dei brushed off the widow Calvi's statements as 'emotional speculation'. But what she said was only a factual rendering of what her husband had told her. She never claimed anything more than that. Moreover, Don Mario Lantini's letter was contentious. Clara Calvi had at all times been clear about her source and had given testimony about it under oath on several occasions. Don Lantini knew this, so why did he bother to trouble her? The fact that she never replied was therefore neither surprising, nor material. But the real point was that Don Lantini's letter might have been more appropriately addressed to the persons who had led Roberto Calvi to believe he was talking -- directly or indirectly -- to Opus Dei. With Benelli's death, the last opposition to Opus Dei's elevation to 'floating diocese' status evaporated in the College of Cardinals and three days after the meeting closed Cardinal Casaroli and Cardinal Baggio issued on behalf of John Paul II the Papal hull, With Very Great Hope, including the Apostolic Constitution known as Ut sit, which transformed Opus Dei into a Personal Prelature, The Pope declared:
So now it was official. According to this declaration the Pope agreed that Opus Dei was not Escriva de Balaguer's invention, but God's, Escriva de Balaguer had only been the messenger, But just as significant, Ut sit legalized Opus Dei's status under canon law as a state within a Church. Not only did With Very Great Hope and the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit make Don Alvaro del Portillo the 'little pope' of Villa Tevere, it confirmed that he reported to no-one save the Big Pope across the Tiber, though as far as the Big Pope was concerned he was rather more dependent on Opus Dei than met the eye. Should for any reason the Prelate of Opus Dei not wish to take orders from the Pontiff of Rome, he would then be responsible only to God, But if the Pontiff chose not to listen to the Prelate he risked finding his finances reduced by a significant amount. The confirmation contained in With Very Great Hope that Opus Dei was founded 'by divine inspiration' bestowed upon the Prelature justification for its supreme arrogance as it placed the Work above all other institutions of the Church, being that it was the only one -- aside from the Church herself -- that claimed to be founded by God and not by man. This was exploited as a divine licence permitting Opus Dei to practise a modus operandi that in certain matters placed it close to the outer fringe of social custom and legality. The official ceremony raising Opus Dei to the Church's only Personal Prelature took place in mid-March 1983 in Sant' Eugenio. Dramatic though it was, crowning a half-century of hope and planning, the ceremony was overshadowed by an unsettling event. Two weeks before, the Rumasa group was expropriated by Spain's newly elected Socialist government and placed in liquidation. _______________ Notes: 1. Message No. 22582/1X/04 di prot, Re: Roberto Calvi to the Ministero dell'Interno (UCIGOS) and Comando Generlte Arma CC., 2° Rep. S.A. - Uff. Operazioni. 2. Mario Almerighi, Ordinanza de rinvio a giudizio nel procedimento penale contro Flavio Carboni e altri, Rome, pp. 93-94n. 3. Convicted on the cheque-bouncing charges by the Criminal Court in Rome on 24 October 1986, Carboni was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. 4. Raw, Op. cit., p. 13.
|